Martin Luther, German Saviour: German Evangelical Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917-1933.

James M. Stayer, Martin Luther, German Saviour: German Evangelical Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917-1933

Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000. xvi + 177 pp. $55. ISBN: 0-7735-2044-9.

James Stayer's colleagues can no longer regard him exclusively as a specialist in Anabaptism. This study moves far away from Anabaptist thought on taking up the sword or on the community of goods to the early twentieth century and seven Luther scholars' interpretations of the Reformer's teachings: Karl Holl, Karl Barth, Friedrich Gogarten, Werner Elert, Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Erich Vogelsang. The underlying lesson, which most of us have long-since digested, is that historians' works will reflect not only their private interests but the trends and concerns of the day -- their Sitz im Leben. All of these men worked in and responded to the Weimar era, and of those who lived into the Nazi period, Karl Barth alone rejected National Socialism. Indeed, it may be these scholars' demonstrated affinities rather than Luther's thoughts on obedience to magistrates that raised the specter of a special Lutheran proclivity toward subjection to the Fuhrer.

Stayer divides his treatment into five chapters: "Luther Scholarship before the Great War," "Karl Holl and the Origin of the Luther Renaissance," "The Dialectical Theology and Luther Studies," "The Confessional Lutherans at Erlangen," and "The Luther Renaissance in Transition: Emanuel Hirsch and Erich Vogelsang." The theological issues that recur throughout the book, as prominent among these men's concerns, are four: the timing of Luther's "breakthrough" insight concerning the justification by faith; God's wrath and whether His "no" concealed a "yes"; human beings' role, if any, in attaining salvation; and the meaning of Christ's Passion.

Moved equally by Ernst Troeltsch's culturally-situated, ethnocentric Christianity and Heinrich Denifle and Hartmann Grisar's anti-Lutheran polemics, Karl Holl launched the so-called Luther Renaissance, joining the post-World War I nationalist Vaterlandspartei movement of 1917. Hall's vast and influential Luther exegesis bespoke his "powerful monotheistic faith, reverence for the historical Lutheran teaching on justification, and belief in the moral superiority of German culture" (46). Lutheranism was a religion of moral obligation.

The "dialectical theologians" derived from various backgrounds, attracted by each other's writings. Of Swiss Reformed provenance and liberal political tendencies, Karl Barth nevertheless took professorships within German academe until banished by the Nazis. Prescient in historiographic terms, Barth insisted that the Reformation was not disconnected from the Middle Ages. Theologically, however, God was wholly other than his creatures. Barth stayed true to the double predestination of his credal origins. The Third Reich was God's judgment on Lutheranism.

Friedrich Gogarten, too, stood by a fully transcendant God and found the same convictions in Martin Luther. He crafted polemics against any who advanced a point of contact between the human and the divine. Gogarten's Luther found the crucified Christ only in his "abyss of despair" (74).

Erlangen was a center for conservative Lutheran theologians, such as Werner Elert and Paul Althaus, who were set on adapting Lutheranism "to the needs of their time" (79). They disputed the dialecticians' utterly transcendant God and saw a role for people in deciding for or against faith. Althaus's Luther characterized the service of the state as a work of love, and war as service to peace (94).

Elsewhere, Holl's successors Emanuel Hirsch and Erich Vogelsang reaffirmed monergism, God's total and exclusive power. Both men continued their search for Luther's "Experience in the Tower." Stayer understandably faults Vogelsang for failing to detect an evolution in Luther's attitudes toward the Jews. Against the background of 1933, Vogelsang regarded Jews as "the archetype of the damned" (116). Althaus saw a "limited, relative legitimacy for non-Christian religions" (121).

Stayer does not intend this work as background toward an understanding of the relations between Christians and the German state after 1933. Nonetheless, his pliant and subtle summary, founded in a thorough grasp of the dominant intellectual issues and personalities in Weimar-era Luther studies -- at that time almost exclusively theological studies -- and much beyond, points us in this direction. A brief review can barely hint at the variety and complexity of the theological matters taken up. While too specialized for undergraduates, this book is essential reading for graduate students and advanced Reformation scholars alike, who will, in its perusal, better understand the derivation of interpretations that we continue to encounter almost daily.